employees, then fruits, then students — nothing connectsSELECT * to window functions, CTEs, JSON, transactions, tuning"By the time you reach Chapter 24, you're not practicing SQL anymore — you're running the exact kind of analysis a data analyst, backend engineer, or DBA does every single week."
Prosenjit Mitra is a Senior IT Professional with 20+ years of hands-on experience in digital transformation, database architecture, and technical leadership. He didn't write this book from a textbook — he wrote it from two decades of designing the exact schemas, writing the exact reports, and debugging the exact slow queries that show up in real production systems.
Every query in this book was written the way it would actually be reviewed in a real code review — clear, explained, and grounded in a schema that mirrors what you'll encounter in an actual job.
Meet "NovaMart," the single e-commerce database you'll use for the entire book — so every query afterward builds on something you already understand.
SELECT, WHERE, sorting, NULLs, and string/date/numeric functions — real fundamentals, real filtering logic.
Aggregation, every JOIN type, subqueries, set operations, CASE logic, DML, and views — where logic-building begins.
CTEs, window functions, schema design, transactions, stored procedures, JSON, and query performance tuning.
Full business analytics reports and complete end-to-end case studies — exactly what a data analyst gets asked for.
Technical interview puzzles and advanced performance optimization techniques most books never touch.
EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS) like an engineer, not a guessGo from basic SELECTs to full business reports: cohorts, RFM segmentation, revenue trends.
Understand what's happening under the ORM — joins, transactions, indexing, slow queries.
Sharpen execution-plan reading, indexing strategy, partitioning, and tuning on real scenarios.
Walk into a SQL interview having already solved the exact puzzle they're about to ask you.
A few words from readers who put these books to work.
Clear, practical and incredibly useful. I used the query optimization techniques from this book directly in my production database the same week I finished it.
The first SQL book that actually treats real-world schemas as the point instead of an afterthought. NovaMart feels like a database you'd actually work with.
I recommend this to every new hire on my data team. It gave me language for things I was doing instinctively but couldn't explain to junior developers.
The interview prep chapter alone is worth the price. I practiced those 26 queries and nailed every SQL question in my FAANG interview loop.
Coming from MySQL, this book helped me understand PostgreSQL deeply. The EXPLAIN ANALYZE breakdowns changed how I write every query now.
Finally a SQL book that doesn't stop at basic SELECT statements. The CTEs and window functions chapters are brilliantly explained with real business cases.
The performance tuning chapter is pure gold. I used the indexing strategies on our production DB and cut query times by 60%. Incredible ROI.
I've read a dozen SQL books. This is the only one where every example uses the same database. That consistency makes concepts actually stick.
The business reports chapters are exactly what I needed. Revenue cohorts, RFM segmentation — this is the kind of SQL work real companies pay for.
As a self-taught developer, I had gaps in my SQL knowledge. This book filled every one of them. The progression from beginner to advanced is perfectly paced.
547 queries. 26 chapters. One realistic database that mirrors an actual job. Written by someone who's spent 20+ years doing this in production, not just teaching it.
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